If Anything...
"If Anything..." is the thirty-third and final chapter of One Rainy Day in May. It is the fifth and final chapter to be narrated by Xanther Ibrahim. Chapter Quote "The word "history" comes from an ancient Greek verb ίστωρειν meaning "to ask." One who asks about things - about their dimensions, weight, location, moods, names, holiness, smell - is an historian. But the asking is not idle. It is when you are asking about something that you realize you yourself have survived it, and so you must carry it, or fashion it into a thing that carries itself..." - Anne Carson Summary The chapter opens up on May 10, 2014 at 23:27:02 in Los Angeles, California. Xanther wakes up from her sleep and feels a great deal of sadness as she sees the cat and thinks about its chances of survival. Xanther remembers a time when she still lived in Georgia and one day, on the back patio of her home, she found an injured hummingbird on the ground. It was in pain and was unable to fly. The bird was convulsing, as if having a seizure. Xanther wanted to bring it to Astair but the bird had died in her hand before she could. Xanther stops recalling this memory and instead notices something bizarre about her room: the window and door are wide open. She is unsure of how or why they are like that. She wants to close the window and door and go downstairs but she decides instead to stay in bed. She thinks about earlier when she and Anwar first found the cat and were trying to keep it alive. Anwar wanted to take Xanther to a hospital but Xanther refused, saying they need to go to a vet first. Two technicians named Teresa and Dr. Brady offered to watch the cat for the night, saying they could only hope the cat would survive, but Xanther didn't like that idea. They had conducted a check-up on the cat - checking its temperature, pulse, and weight. The results for all three were "next to nothing." Teresa had guessed that the cat was less than two weeks old. The Narcons suddenly make a comment on the fate of Teresa and Brady. In the future, Teresa will never marry. She will leave the animal care industry, move to Arizona, and die in a car accident while on her way to clean a house. Her final thoughts are of her mother, already dead for twenty years. Brady will live until the age of eighty-nine but will forget who he is by the age of seventy. Neither Teresa nor Brady will remember this day, and what they will hear about on the news later will only remind them of their good fortune. Along the way back home, Xanther kept reading through the list the technicians wrote for her that will help keep the cat alive. She was instructed to feed the cat every six hours. If it survived for six weeks, they could begin giving it shots. Once they got back home and Anwar returned to Venice to retrieve Xanther's glasses, Astair helped her clean up the blood from her arms and legs. They saw only minor scratches, which didn't make sense for the amount of blood. It also didn't match up with her memory of falling and being scratched. Once Xanther finishes thinking about the events from earlier, she lies back down in her bed. She feels that everything is in place and safe. Her mind is no longer filled with questions. She places the cat next to her and it starts sleeping. Still, it can barely move and it is unable to open its eyes. She feels much more calm with the cat around. She feels like "even if nothing seems to have changed everything suddenly feels manageable. Or better: answerable." The chapter ends on May 10, 2014 at 23:32:09. Page by page annotations Category:Chapters